BECAUSE THE TORAH—the first five books of the Bible—is the center of Jewish liturgical life, our perception of Israelite women tends to be determined largely by what we read in the synagogue.* Yet women are mentioned throughout the Bible, and many passages in Prophets and Writings provide additional information about their lives. Still, the Bible alone is not a sufficient or adequate source for recovering the lives of Israelite women in the biblical period. For one thing, it deals more with national concerns and leaders than the lives of ordinary people; and even when addressing individuals, it focuses on the responsibilities and (mis)deeds of the male heads of the households in which most people lived. Men are thus mentioned far more often than are women. Moreover, much of the Bible originated in and reflects the urban setting of Jerusalem, whereas most Israelites lived in agrarian households in small villages or walled towns that were not true cities.
Fortunately, modern scholarship has been able to overcome many of these difficulties by using extra-biblical sources in addition to the biblical text. Archeological materials from Israelite sites—including dwellings, remnants of foodstuffs, tools and implements, tombs, jewelry, and ancient art—provide important data. Ethnographic studies of traditional cultures in the Middle East and elsewhere help us relate the archeological materials to various aspects of daily life in biblical antiquity. And anthropological models dealing with gender dynamics in premodern cultures allow us to understand the interactions of Israelite men and women and also the significance of women’s roles. In addition, texts from other ancient Near Eastern cultures can supplement or illumine the information in biblical texts. All together, these sources provide a fuller and more accurate view of the women of ancient Israel than could be obtained by using the Bible alone.
Evidence negates the stereotype that women were confined to the household.
Marriage and Children
The Hebrew noun ishah means both “woman” and “wife.” This signals the fact that a woman’s identity was virtually inseparable from her status as a married woman. It was inconceivable that a woman might willingly live on her own apart from a family; widows and divorcées often led precarious lives. Marriage was the norm for both women and men, but it was not usually the kind of love-based companionate relationship that is the ideal in the modern world (and in some biblical stories such as Rachel and Jacob in Genesis 29). Rather, it was a heterosexual pairing meant to provide offspring and thus assure generational continuity in the ownership of family land. The conjugal pair with their children would also constitute a work force sufficient to meet household needs in an agrarian society. In addition, adult children would be the ones to care for aging parents. Having children was a non-negotiable necessity.
The Bible does not have a term for “marriage” as such. The term chatan, translated “groom,” denotes a man with a father-in-law, thus indicating the conception of marriage as a union of two families. The Bible typically indicates the formation of a marital bond by saying that a man “takes” a woman. The courtship narrative of Rebekah, for example, culminates in the statement that Isaac “took Rebekah and she became his wife” (Genesis 24:67). This expression reflects the patrilocality of Israelite households. That is, a bride would move to the household of the groom, who usually continued to reside in the same household where he was raised. An extended family would thus be formed, although each constituent nuclear family might have its own abode within a family compound.
Financial arrangements generally accompanied marriage except among the poorest families. Although there are no “marriage laws” as such in the Bible, information in narratives indicates that a bride’s family typically provided a dowry, usually consisting of moveable property such as jewelry, clothing, and household utensils. In wealthier families, livestock and servants might also be included (see Genesis 24:59; 29:24, 29); and the groom and his family could supplement it (Genesis 24:53). The dowry theoretically remained the possession of the woman for the duration of the marriage, although her husband sometimes may have had access to it.
Another marital payment was made by the groom’s family to that of the bride. This betrothal gift, sometimes erroneously called “bride-price” (mohar; see Genesis 34:12; Exodus 22:15–16; I Samuel 18:25), has often been interpreted as evidence that a man purchased a woman. The fact that a word sometimes used for “husband” is baal, which can (but does not always) mean “master,” has also been adduced to claim that a woman was the property of her husband. And the use of the verb kanah, which can mean “to buy” but more generally “to acquire,” to describe Boaz’s marriage to Ruth (Ruth 4:10) has been similarly interpreted.
However, anthropological analysis of these exchanges shows that such assertions are flawed. Instead, the dowry and betrothal gift are understood to function in overlapping ways to maintain the viability of a family. The betrothal gift would provide some compensation to a woman’s family, which would lose the labor of a daughter upon her marriage. The dowry would constitute a woman’s economic safety net in the event of widowhood or divorce, especially if she had no sons or if her father was deceased. Moreover, the two payments together served to establish and solidify alliances between a woman’s natal family and her marital one. Such connections were important in agrarian communities; they increased the likelihood of mutual aid in the event of economic or other difficulties, not unusual in Israelite households living in marginal environments. Thus betrothal and dowry payments together had important economic, social, and legal functions.
To say that a husband did not own his wife is not to claim that there was equality between spouses. Perhaps the greatest gender asymmetry was in the area of sexuality. The patrilineal nature of Israelite society, with land and property transferred across generations via the male line, is likely the reason for the stringency of biblical legal precepts dealing with female sexuality. A woman’s fiancé and then her husband had exclusive rights to her sexuality; and her parents guarded it before betrothal. Her virginity at marriage was valued, at least in part, as a means of assuring the groom of his paternity of his bride’s first child. For similar reasons, women and men are treated differently in biblical adultery laws (Leviticus 20:10; Deuteronomy 22:22–28), where sex between a married man and an unmarried woman is discouraged but not proscribed. Concern for heirs is also a factor in the institution known as levirate marriage, in which a childless widow would marry her deceased husband’s brother, with the first child (or son, according to some interpreters) produced by that liaison considered the dead man’s heir (Deuteronomy 25:5–10; see the narrative of Tamar in Genesis 38). The case of the daughters of Zelophehad (Numbers 26:33; 27:1–11; 36:1–12) would seem to modulate the absolute nature of Israelite patrilineal inheritance; note, however, that in that case, inheritance of land by daughters is accompanied subsequently by provisions that the land would remain within the clan (Numbers 36).
The existence of polygyny (more than one wife) in ancient Israel, as in other Near Eastern lands, must also be understood in light of powerful communal interest in stabilizing households by transmitting property to biological heirs. The multiple wives of a monarch (such as David and Solomon) signified his high status and his ability to establish political alliances with diplomatic marriages, and wealthy individuals had several wives as a sign of affluence. But in most instances a man took a second wife or a concubine when the first wife failed to produce offspring. The Genesis narratives give the impression that polygyny was common. However, shorter life spans for women than for men, which meant a shortage of women of childbearing age, and the fact that most people probably lived near the poverty level, would have precluded polygyny for all but the wealthy. Indeed, many biblical texts, such as Genesis 2:24, the Song of Songs, several passages in wisdom literature, and even legal rulings such as Exodus 21:4–5, reflect a monogamous norm.
Although dissolution of a marriage was sometimes unavoidable, very little is known about provisions for divorce. Malachi 2:14 refers to a marriage contract, and Isaiah 50:1 mentions a bill of divorce, indicating that formal documents were used for establishing and dissolving a marriage, although probably only for people of means. The sole biblical text with divorce rulings, Deuteronomy 24:1–4, addresses a particular situation, the case of a man seeking to remarry a woman to whom he had once been married. Unfortunately, it gives the impression that only men could initiate divorce in the biblical period. However, that notion can be contested in light of the narrative of a Levite’s secondary wife leaving him (Judges 19:2) and because the Elephantine papyri, which are documents from a community founded by Judeans in Egypt in the 6th century B.C.E., mention a woman divorcing her husband.
Women in Household Life
It would be incorrect to assume, on the basis of gender asymmetry in matters of sexuality, that women were subordinate to and dominated by men in all other aspects of life. Indeed, with few resources available from outside the household, the relationship between a woman and her husband was one of interdependence and complementarity in most household functions. As the primary social and economic unit, the family household was the locus of all the activities, in addition to procreation, that were necessary for the maintenance and continuity of life. Family life was task-oriented; without the labor of both women and men, and also children, survival in the marginal habitat of the Israelite highlands would not have been possible. But in meeting a household’s economic, educational, and religious needs, the responsibilities of all family members were not the same. The division of labor by gender, albeit with some overlap, was the most efficient way to accomplish the myriad household tasks.
In the contemporary world we tend to think of households as private realms, distinct from the public, male-dominated arena. However, this private-public dichotomy is based on the structure of large, industrialized societies and is not an accurate characterization of small, premodern agrarian communities, where the boundaries between households and the larger communities in which they were enmeshed were blurred. Both men and women, although probably in different ways, took part in the discussions and decisions affecting community life that took place within most households. Realizing this, along with recognizing the significant household roles of women as described below, helps us understand the folly of referring to Israelite women as “only wives and mothers.”
Economic Roles. Women’s economic roles were manifold and complex. Women sometimes participated in the male-dominated tasks of growing grains and tending orchards and vineyards, especially in labor-intensive harvest periods (see Ruth 2:2–9). They also had their own agricultural activities, especially the cultivation of garden vegetables and herbs. Both genders shared in the care of livestock and of work animals. However, women’s major contributions to the household economy were the time-consuming food- and fiber-processing jobs. They transformed agricultural products into edible and wearable forms through their expertise and labor.
Cereal crops, the most important food source in the biblical period, provided an estimated 50% of a person’s daily calories. A series of arduous processes, including grinding and kneading, were necessary to make grains edible. It is estimated that three hours of work would have been required each day to produce enough bread or gruel for an average family of six. Women, with the help of older children, not only produced bread but also processed and prepared many other foodstuffs, mainly fruits, vegetables, legumes, and dairy products. Some of these were eaten raw; but many were variously churned, pressed, pickled, roasted, or dried on a seasonal basis. Meat would have been eaten rarely, probably only at festivals.
Several positive features offset the onerous nature of women’s food preparation responsibilities. Unlike male crop-growing tasks, in which yields could be drastically affected by periodic droughts or infestations of insects, food preparation always yielded a finished product. Thus, women would have experienced a consistent sense of accomplishment from their daily work. Another source of gratification lay in a woman’s mastery of the considerable technical skills required by the diverse food-processing procedures.
Social and political aspects added to the individual benefits, for women, of food preparation. Archeologists often find grinding tools in clusters in Israelite dwellings. This indicates that women from neighboring households gathered together, undoubtedly to chat and sing during the long hours spent preparing grains and other foods. The time spent together helped forge women into informal social networks in a way that the more solitary tasks performed by men did not. These networks constituted a social safety net—women would know of an illness or emergency in a neighboring household and would find ways to help. These networks also operated on a political level; women gained and shared information that influenced community decisions made by male officials. Such indirect female political power is typically unrecognized but nonetheless real.
Women had other economic roles. They concocted potions and salves from wild or homegrown herbs and plants to use in folk remedies. Although rural households did procure sophisticated terracotta vessels and metal implements from urban workshops, some village women likely produced simple ceramic pots and stone grinding tools for everyday use. However, the most important household activity besides food processing was textile production, perhaps because of its potential for commercial activity beyond the household (see Proverbs 31:13, 24).
Archeologists have discovered tools—spindle whorls, loom weights, weaving shuttles, and needles—that testify to the production of fabrics in Israelite households. Like the steps involved in grain processing, the procedures for making textiles were often time-consuming and tedious. It takes several hours of spinning, for example, to produce the amount of yarn or thread needed for an hour of weaving. Women in pre-modern cultures typically do textile work together; indeed, some of the tasks are done most efficiently by women working in tandem. The personal, social, and political benefits accruing to women as food-producers were intensified by their experience of working together to make garments and coverings for their families and perhaps also for barter or sale.
Educational and Managerial Roles. The primary care of young children was the mother’s responsibility. Child care was integrated into a woman’s daily routines, no doubt with the assistance of older children and elderly parents. Women were assisted in most household tasks by their children; and they supervised offspring of both genders until boys were old enough to accompany their fathers into the fields. Fathers surely taught sons the tasks and activities performed mainly by men. Because there were no schools in the biblical period, except perhaps for a small number of upper-class urban youth, women were the chief educators and socializers of both boys and girls in their early years, and for girls into adolescence.
Women as educators are not very visible in the Bible, where the mention of sages and elders gives the impression of a male monopoly in teaching skills and inculcating traditional practices and beliefs. However, an understanding of the dynamics of an agrarian household indicates the prominence of women in this role, which involved instruction in the technologies of household life, in appropriate behavior, and also in the transmission of culture and values more generally. The frequent parallelism of “mother” and “father” in the book of Proverbs (1:8; 4:3; 6:20; 15:20; 19:26; 20:20; 23:22, 25; 28:24; 30:11, 17) indicates that both parents taught their children. Proverbs 31:1 singles out King Lemuel’s mother as the source of his instruction.
Because women had more contact hours with children, their interactions with offspring were essential for transmitting many aspects of Israelite culture from one generation to the next. The very notion of “wisdom,” which includes technical expertise as well as social sagacity, has important female aspects, arguably rooted in the broad role of women in caring for and socializing their children. Note that the wisdom is frequently personified as a woman in Proverbs (1:20–33; 3:13–18; 4:5–9; 7:4–5; 8:1–36; 9:1–6; 14:1). Also, the “strong woman” (eshet chayil) of Proverbs 31 is characterized as speaking wisdom and teaching kindness (v. 26). And two narratives feature an ishah chachamah (“wise woman”; II Samuel 14:1–20; 20:14–22).
A woman’s educative role involved more than the instruction of children. In the complex, multigenerational Israelite households, older women served as household managers, instructing (depending upon the household’s particular composition) daughters, daughters-in-law, nieces, slaves, servants, and other dependents in the array of women’s tasks, as well as in appropriate behavior. The fifth commandment (Exodus 20:12; Deuteronomy 5:16) and the parent laws of Exodus 21:15, 17 and Leviticus 20:9, which were likely concerned with the behavior of adult children in multi-generational households, underscore the authority of both parents over both female and male offspring. In contrast, other ancient Near Eastern societies apparently favored men over women in assigning parental authority. Another indication of female authority in household life is the fact that mothers predominate in the Bible as the ones who name their children.
In light of women’s extensive educative and managerial roles, the appearance of the phrase “mother’s household” (beit eim) rather than the usual “father’s household” (beit av) several times in the Bible is noteworthy. “Mother’s household” appears in several women-centered texts (Genesis 24:28; Ruth 1:8; Songs 3:4; 8:2; see also Proverbs 14:1) and suggests that women controlled most internal household activities (as does Rebekah, Genesis 27:5–17; and the woman of Shunem, II Kings 4:8–37; 8:1–6), whereas men dealt with suprahousehold, lineage-related matters. Near Eastern documents attest to the managerial authority of royal women over certain aspects of palace life; women in ordinary households would likely have had similar control on a smaller scale, especially if there were slaves or servants in their households. Thus a senior woman would have had some authority over male servitors as well as over children, as when the woman of Shunem gives instructions to “her [male] servant” (II Kings 4:24).
Religious Roles. Women also had major roles in household religious life. Biblical texts focus on national and communal practices yet reveal that family celebrations punctuated the annual religious calendar. For example, Passover in its origins was likely a home-based spring festival involving specific kinds of food preparation; the other major festivals, similarly grounded in the agricultural calendar, no doubt involved family feasting. Household Sabbath traditions are difficult to trace back to the biblical period; but the story of the manna provisions for the seventh day (Exodus 16:21–30), as well as post-biblical sources, indicate festal meals on the seventh day. The food component of festivals and Sabbath is inconceivable without female culinary expertise and labor.
Women also participated in celebrations at shrines near their homes and even initiated cultic activity. The Hannah narrative (I Samuel 1–2) is instructive in this regard. The childless Hannah journeys regularly with her family to the cultic center of Shiloh to share in an annual sacrificial offering; she comes “before יהוה” to make a vow in the hope of ending her barrenness; and later, having given birth to Samuel, she fulfills her vow by bringing sacrificial offerings to Shiloh. Also, several passages in Deuteronomy (12:12; 16:11, 14; 31:10–12) are gender inclusive in their instructions for bringing sacrifices and celebrating at the central shrine, although in other texts (Exodus 23:17; Deuteronomy 16:16) only men are specifically required to do so. Finally, dozens of priestly passages use the common-gender term nefesh, indicating that both women and men were commanded to offer certain sacrifices (see Leviticus 2:1 and Numbers 5:6–10).
In addition to family festivals and communal celebrations and sacrifices mentioned in the Bible, certain household religious activities—carried out only by women—are known from archeological and ethnographic evidence. These practices, which are related to childbearing, may well have been the most important part of women’s religious lives. Women in pre-modern cultures typically cope with the many problems related to reproduction, which today would be handled by medicine, through behaviors that might now be considered “magic” but were clearly religious in nature. Facing the possibility of barrenness, childbirth complications, difficulty in lactation, and high infant mortality rates (for as many as one in two infants did not survive to the age of five), Israelite women carried out various practices meant not only to keep away the evil spirits thought to cause problems but also to attract benevolent ones believed to bring reproductive success. Many of these practices—such as wearing amulets to avert the “evil eye,” tying a red thread around the limb of a newborn, keeping a light burning in a birthing or sleeping room, salting and swaddling a newborn (see Ezekiel 16:4)—continued into the post-biblical period and are found in Jewish, Christian, and Muslim families well into the 20th century.
These household religious activities, which focused on the welfare of their families and dealt with life-and-death matters, would have been empowering. Women were ritual experts in household practice much as priests were at the Temple, for they possessed the requisite knowledge to perform rituals in a prescribed and, they believed, efficacious way. Moreover, household rituals dealing with childbirth were carried out for women by women, including neighbors, relatives, and sometimes midwives (I Samuel 4:20; see also Ruth 4:13–17) in intimate settings that further contributed to female bonding and solidarity. Women’s religious practices were profoundly important components of their adult lives.
Professional Women
Women in the Bible appear in nearly twenty different community roles beyond those we often associate with the household. These particular roles correspond in a large measure to what we know about women’s lives from extra-biblical sources. These professional activities are noteworthy because they show that some Israelite women did hold professional positions that served their communities directly, thus negating the notion that women were confined to the household (a stereotype itself in that it often conjures the household in contemporary terms rather than a household as a pre-modern locus of economic and social power).
The role mentioned most frequently is prostitution, perhaps a recourse for marginalized women unable to support themselves in any other way. This occupation is condemned in priestly texts but viewed matter-of-factly in the narratives about Rahab, the heroic prostitute of Jericho (Joshua 2, 5), and about the two women who brought their dispute to Solomon (I Kings 3:16–28).
Other roles were much less controversial and contributed in important ways to Israelite communities. Women practiced trades or crafts, working in palace workshops to produce items (perfume, food, baked goods) for the royal family or state events (I Samuel 8:13) and to produce fabrics for religious shrines (Exodus 35:25; II Kings 23:7). Some women marketed textiles produced at home (Proverbs 31:24); and the archeological discovery of women’s stamp seals, which were used for commercial transactions, attests to female activity in the business world. According to Nehemiah 3:12, women were construction workers in the post-exilic effort to rebuild the walls of Jerusalem. Women served in the communication arena as couriers, usually carrying dispatches from women to other women (Proverbs 9:3–4) but occasionally bearing messages between men (II Samuel 17:17); and they were heralds, making announcements to the wider public (Isaiah 40:9; Psalm 68:12). Women served as midwives; they assist Rachel and Tamar in childbirth, and the midwives Shiphrah and Puah are heroes of the Exodus narrative. Wet-nurses are also mentioned, usually only for elites; Rebekah has one, as probably did most princes (II Kings 11:2–3), with Moses’ own mother (Jochebed) hired to nurse him.
Midwives were also religious specialists, since prayers and potions are part of the culture of childbirth in traditional societies. Other female religious specialists included minor temple servitors (Exodus 38:8; I Samuel 2:22). Some female religious specialists are condemned, as in the gender-inclusive denunciations of various kinds of divination (including consulting the dead) in Leviticus (19:31; 20:6, 27) and Deuteronomy (18:10–11), a sure sign that women’s divinatory services were being utilized. Although necromancy is condemned, I Samuel 28:7–25 depicts a female medium consulting the dead Samuel for King Saul effectively and without the narrator’s criticism. Women also in some cases were perceived as sorcerers and are specifically censured as such (Exodus 22:17; see also Isaiah 57:3). The prophet Ezekiel reviles women performing a Temple ritual (8:14–15) as well as a group of female prophets engaged in divination (13:17–23). But other women prophets are heroic figures. Two of the most prominent women in the Bible, Miriam and Deborah, are called prophets (Exodus 15:20; Judges 4:4), as are Huldah, the first person to rule on the authenticity of a text as God’s word (II Kings 22:14–20), and Noadiah, a leader of the postexilic community (Nehemiah 6:14).
Other female professionals, less explicitly religious, include Deborah in her role as a resolver of disputes and as a charismatic military leader (“judge”), and the “wise women” of Tekoa and Abel, who help resolve national crises. The wives of kings managed palace-related tasks; and a few also exercised political power, some even bearing a title (g’virah) signifying that they were royal functionaries (see I Kings 15:13 and II Kings 10:13). Female musicians led the celebrations for military victories attributed to divine intervention (Exodus 15:21; I Samuel 18:6–7; Psalm 68:26; Jeremiah 31:4, 13); their performances reflect a women’s musical genre that involved drumming, dancing, and singing. Other women are mentioned as professional singers (II Samuel 19:36; Ezra 2:65; Nehemiah 7:67; Ecclesiastes 2:8) and perhaps even Temple singers (I Chronicles 25:5–6). Also, as in many traditional societies, women more than men were experts in mourning rituals (Jeremiah 9:16–19; Ezekiel 32:16).
Recognizing women’s community roles has important implications for understanding the lives of the women engaged in these occupations. Many of these professional specialists, including musicians and singers, mourning women, “wise women,” and even midwives and prophets, functioned in groups or were connected to each other in guild-like associations. The “daughters” learning dirges in Jeremiah 9:19 and wailing over Saul in II Samuel 1:24 are analogous to “sons” in the phrase “sons [or: company, disciples] of the prophets” (as in II Kings 5:22; 6:1); they constituted a guild (loosely speaking) of professional mourning women. The existence of other such groups can safely be assumed; informal organizations of women with technical expertise in certain areas, such as birthing or healing, are widely found in pre-modern cultures, including Israel’s neighbors. These women would have gathered occasionally to share knowledge, train new members, and, in the case of musical professions, compose songs and rehearse in preparation for performances.
Membership in such groups, which typically are organized hierarchically with senior or more talented members earning the respect of the others, provided women with opportunities to experience prestige and status. Also, whether they functioned in groups or as individuals, female professionals provided services to their communities, thereby reaping the benefits of contributing to the public weal. It is noteworthy that societies in which women have rich opportunities for extra-household association with each other are generally considered the least repressive with respect to gender.
Finally, the existence of such groups, with their own hierarchies, calls into question the very notion (held by some readers today) of ancient Israel as completely patriarchal, with women dominated by men. As in every society, there were multiple loci of power in ancient Israel. Women’s professional services and groups, along with the informal networks of women in neighboring households (described above) and the senior wife’s managerial authority within the household (described above), cut across the maledominated hierarchies that prevailed in other aspects of family and community life. Recognizing these three aspects of ancient Israelite society allows a more nuanced reading of Israelite women’s lives.
—Carol Meyers
* This essay is a modified and abridged version of the biblical section of the entry “Woman,” Encyclopedia Judaica, 2nd edition, edited by Michael Berenbaum and Fred Skolnik (2007), Volume 21, pp. 156–161.